Questions and Silence
by Leia 96
Summary: Things went a little differently the day that Annabel and Owen argued, the day that she found out Emily had been brave enough to speak out. Annabel couldn't take it. Just couldn't. AU from the day Annabel and Owen argued: an imagining of what might have happened if Annabel had done something irreversible in a moment of unhappiness. TRIGGER WARNING (suicide)
1. Surprise

_**AN: **__This is a story that I've been kicking around for several years. Yes, years. When I first read the book, I remember coming to this part and thinking that Annabel was going to attempt suicide. Obviously she didn't, but that's where this came from. She was clearly in a dark place and I could definitely see it happening. This story begins the day after Annabel and Owen argued about her having ditched him at the club, which is also the day that she found out that Emily was telling people what really happened with Will. I have most but not all of this story written. It'll be fairly short, probably between 5 and 10 chapters._

_And now, part two of this abnormally long author's note: I'm appealing to you, fellow Just Listen fans, to help with a project I'm working on. __**A JUST LISTEN MOVIE. **__Specifically, a short film of the car wash scene. And yes, I put that in bold so that anyone tempted to skip this would get sucked in and read it. I'm shameless. Anyway, now that I have your attention, just go check out this link – I'm really hoping some fans of the book will be excited enough about this project to help out. Indiegogo dot com /projects/just-listen-a-short-film/x/1919571 (remove spaces, make the "dot" a period)_

_Anyway, sorry for this crazy long note. And thanks if you actually read it. And double thanks if you took a moment to check out the link :) Now on with the story!_

**1\. Surprise**

Whitney was starting to wake up earlier than she used to. Today, for instance, she was up before Annabel, even. She hovered in the kitchen, wanting to help her mother with breakfast, but not really sure how. Her mother was heating a bowl of instant oatmeal, plopping sizzling bacon onto a napkin—Whitney cringed as the napkin began to turn transparent from the grease—setting out a box of cereal and a jug of milk. Whitney went into the fridge and pulled a carton of orange juice out to set on the table.

Her mother glanced at the clock on the microwave and sighed.

"Whitney, could you go get Annabel up? She's going to be late." Whitney, glad to have something productive to do, nodded and padded up the stairs.

She stopped in front of Annabel's door and hesitated. She wouldn't have wanted Annabel to come barging into her room while she was asleep, and while she knew that her younger sister was not as secretive as she was, she didn't want to invade her privacy. She knocked on the door, hard.

"Annabel?" she called quietly. "Annabel." Louder. She was still knocking. "Come on, Annabel, wake up." No response.

Sighing, Whitney turned the knob. If Annabel was angry with her, well, that was her own fault for being such a heavy sleeper.

She went into the room, and had a momentary unsettling feeling in her stomach. She brushed it away. Annabel was asleep on top of the covers, her clothes from the day before still on. Whitney sighed. Some days were harder than others-she could understand that.

She shook Annabel's shoulder. Annabel did not wake up. Harder. She didn't move.

The feeling in her stomach came back tenfold, and her breath stopped for a moment. Something was very wrong.

"Annabel?!" Whitney cried. "Annabel!"

She paused, listening for her breathing. She couldn't hear it.

She glanced around, frantic and nervous and unsure and terrified all at the same time. As her head whipped back toward Annabel, she spotted something odd on Annabel's otherwise very neat nightstand: an empty pill bottle.

It was ironic, or perhaps karmic, that Whitney was the one who found Annabel. For, to look at her standing there, terrified tears trailing down her cheeks as she screamed for her father, it would have been impossible to forget nearly a year before as Annabel had stood over Whitney in the bathroom, screaming for her father in the exact same way.

In the chaos that followed, Whitney sat quietly in a corner, crying silently and thinking one thing: her sister Annabel had had more secrets than she'd ever imagined.

* * *

Something was wrong with her, Owen decided as he strode across the student parking lot. There was a reason she'd left Bendo's Saturday night, and she wouldn't tell him what it was. Yesterday, they'd argued about it. Today, he was going to convince her to tell him.

Whatever it was, he knew that if it was big enough that she felt like she couldn't tell him, then it was too big for her not to.

He didn't see her at lunch, though. She had found some new spot to eat. She was avoiding him.

If he'd been listening to the rumors, to the people around him talking, instead of drowning out the world with his music, he'd have heard the stories about what had happened that morning. He'd have heard rumors that she'd been found dead in her bed, that she'd killed herself, and no one could figure out why.

But he _was_ drowning out the world, and so he didn't find out about it until he came home that afternoon.

"Your friend . . ." Mrs. Armstrong began hesitantly. When she'd seen the picture in the news, she'd recognized her as the girl Mallory had introduced her to, the girl Mallory had explained to her was Owen's friend.

"Yeah?" Owen answered dismissively.

"The girl . . . the pretty blond one? A model, or something?"

Owen paused. "Annabel?" He wondered-hoped-that she'd stopped here and talked to his mom before he got home, though he couldn't imagine how she could have gotten here before he did.

She sighed. That was the name of the girl in the story. The girl who was dead.

"Yes. Annabel . . . Greene?"

He nodded. "What about her?"

Mrs. Armstrong blinked the beginnings of tears from her eyes.

"Come sit with me, Owen," she said, scooting over and patting the spot on the couch next to her. He gave her a look, but sat next to her. He sensed that something was wrong.

"I have something . . . _horrible_ to tell you, Owen."

And she told him that his best friend was dead.

He cried.

He blamed himself. Of course he did. They had argued, he had said terrible things to her when she'd clearly been hurting. He told himself he was doing a good thing at the time, that even if he was being harsh, it would be good for her. That if it meant she'd tell him, it would be worth it.

But it hadn't. Something had been hurting her, and instead of helping her lift that weight off her chest, he had only put more pressure on her. She'd cracked.

Owen didn't sleep that night, and in the morning, his mom didn't make him go to school. Mallory

knocked on his door as he sat on his bed, staring blankly out the window, but he didn't answer. She knocked again, and when he still didn't answer, she finally went away.

He was still dressed in his clothes from the day before, hadn't even taken off his shoes. He held his iPod in his lap, scrolling through the songs in her playlist, unable to bring himself to listen to any of them.

He had cried himself out when his mom told him, and she just sat there, holding him. He couldn't think how it had happened, what could possibly have been so bad that Annabel would do that to herself... All he could think of was him, furious with her, and her looking so sad and feeling so guilty for keeping it a secret.

Something or someone had hurt her, had broken her. What could have done that?

And why wouldn't she tell him so he could help her? Now it was too late.


	2. Realization

_**AN: **__My apologies. I promised fairly frequent updates and now it's been almost a month. I will admit part of my hesitation was that I wanted to wait and see how it was received, but alas, the Just Listen fanbase isn't particularly active. So I'm just going to keep posting until I've got it all up, and someone some day will find it and read it. Anyway, regarding the second note on the first chapter, the campaign closed last night and I'm excited to say we reached our goal! As soon as the film is available online (which won't be for a while yet) I will let people know here. I'm very excited to finally be seeing this project through! And now, on with the story!_

**2\. Realization**

"Oh my god, did you hear about Annabel Greene?"

"I know, it's so, like, tragic."

"Can you imagine how, like, depressed she must have been?"

"Maybe... God, Sophie was, like, her only friend and she was sooo pissed at her. Do you think that was it?"

"But that was so long ago. God. Why would she do that?"

Emily was dealing with her own problems-and they were many at the moment-when she heard about Annabel at school. Annabel Greene, formerly the girl she considered her best friend, more recently the slut who slept with Sophie's boyfriend. Dead.

Suicide. Swallowed the whole bottle of pills and never woke up.

It was a lot to handle, and it made Emily's head spin trying to imagine never seeing Annabel again. It was even harder in the face of what had just happened to her.

She thought about the night after it happened. She'd been a mess, and she could barely remember anything else about that night. But she remembered meeting Annabel's terrified gaze on the runway, and wondering what she had to be terrified about.

She thought about it again. The slut who'd slept with Sophie's boyfriend... Emily remembered what Will had said about her when Sophie found them, how angry Sophie had been at Emily for sleeping with her boyfriend, how Will told her she'd come on to him. In retrospect, it sounded a lot like the scene from the night of the party when Annabel slept with Will. Annabel, whimpering and trying to tell Sophie that she hadn't done what Sophie had thought she'd done, Will insisting she'd come on to him.

And after. Sophie may have been angry, but Sophie was always angry. If Annabel had made any kind of an effort to apologize, Sophie would've eventually forgiven her. Eventually. But Annabel had disappeared for the rest of the summer. At school she was by herself all the time. And then there was that afternoon when Will said hi to her. Sophie had screamed at Annabel, and Annabel had shoved her away, but Emily remembered how stiff she'd gotten when Will was talking to her, how sick she'd looked after.

Emily just barely made it to the toilet in time to overturn the contents of her stomach with the force of her realization.

Will had raped Annabel. And she'd let herself be blamed for it.

Emily was suddenly surprised Annabel had managed to stomach living for as long as she had.

Locked in her room, laying across her bed with her head dangling over the end, Whitney for once wasn't alone in not eating. She wasn't sure if she had seen anyone eat anything today, not even her dad. Also for the first time, she didn't take pride in the food she hadn't eaten. She simply wasn't eating because she couldn't bear it. Because she couldn't convince herself of a good enough reason to get off this bed.

Kirsten was on her way home. Dad had called her last night and, crying quietly, told her what had happened. Whitney had been sitting next to him, silent and stony faced the whole time, listening on the extension.

She could tell that when Dad asked her the dreaded question—are you sitting down?—Kirsten had thought that something had happened to Whitney. The truth had caught her completely off guard. Of course it had. Annabel—sweet, baby sister Annabel—was the most well adjusted of all of them. She was healthy and happy. Or so they'd all thought.

Her head hanging upside down off the edge of the bed meant that her tears crept into her hair, instead of trailing down her cheeks. It was odd, but Whitney was okay with it.

She couldn't believe Annabel would hurt herself, couldn't imagine what was possibly so bad that she wanted to end her life. Even when Whitney had been at her very worst, it wasn't about hurting herself, it was about trying to achieve her skewed perception of beauty. In the aftermath, she was upset and depressed and wanted to leave the hospital, but she couldn't imagine wanting to leave everything.

Finally, things were starting to be okay at home. Things had been rough for a while, with their mom's depression, and then her own eating disorder, and she knew it was all hard on her little sister, but for the first time in a long time, things were getting better. So it wasn't that.

Whitney tried quickly to skim through all the information she had about Annabel's social life which, she was realizing, wasn't much. Some kind of falling out with Sophie, but it seemed to have happened a while ago. The only other piece of information was a friendship with the pizza guy who likes techno and seemed to know way more about Annabel than Whitney did.

She latched onto it, determined for some answers of some kind. With her mom locked in her room, probably going back into depression, and her dad sobbing at the kitchen table, waiting until it was time to leave to pick up Kirsten, Whitney felt an urge to _do _something.

Emily didn't know what to do with her new knowledge. She didn't know who to tell, or if she should just keep it a secret, like Annabel clearly had.

Of course, if Annabel had trusted someone with her horrible secret, she might not be dead now.

But Annabel doesn't have any friends that Emily can tell, and it feels wrong to tell her mother, and Emily doesn't even know how to contact Annabel's family.

And so Emily tells no one why Annabel Greene killed herself.


	3. Why?

**3\. Why?**

Owen's mom lets him stay home from school until the funeral, which he ends up deciding not to go to. But after the funeral, his mom tells him that she understands how hard a time he's having, but that he has to go back to school now.

Mallory climbs into the passenger seat of his car, subdued. She knows what happened, what Annabel did, and she cried, but she didn't know Annabel well. Mostly she knows that her brother, after the initial, horrible sobs, has been alternating between punching walls and sitting silently for hours at a time, doing nothing. Not even listening to music.

That's how she knows it's bad.

They're quiet as he drives her to school. When they arrive, she gives him a long hug and he buries his face in her hair, but neither says anything.

She finally pulls away and starts to get out of the car.

"I'll see you this afternoon," he says quietly, and she nods.

"See you," she says, and she turns and goes into the school.

Owen thinks about skipping, but when his mother inevitably asked how school was, he'd have to tell her that he didn't go, and he doesn't feel like having that conversation, so he goes.

There are announcements, as he suspects there have been every day since she died, that there are grief counselors in the office for anyone who wants to talk.

He wants to talk, but not to a grief counselor. He wants to talk to his best friend, the girl he kissed at Mallory's slumber party.

He pays zero attention in his morning classes, but his teachers, who seem to understand how close he was with her, take pity on him and leave him alone.

He sits on the wall at lunch, and it feels empty without her there with him. He scrolls through her playlist on his iPod, but he can't bring himself to listen to any of the songs that will forever remind him of their many afternoons laughing and arguing about music.

He endures the rest of the day.

When he pulls into his driveway at the end of the day, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to be alone, Mallory sitting silently next to him, watching him with unusually concerned eyes, there is a familiar car in the driveway. He knows that car, except that it can't possibly belong to who he thinks it belongs to.

Mallory's breath catches when she sees it and she gives him a puzzled glance, but he jumps out of the car and jogs into the house before she can ask about it, leaving her to hurry behind him.

He bursts into the living room, for a split second expecting to see Annabel sitting there waiting for him, but of course she's not. It's Whitney Greene, Annabel's older sister who likes techno and has an eating disorder, who keeps her problems to herself and who goes deadly silent when she's angry. The beautiful model, who is quietly drinking tea on his couch with his mother. She stands up when she sees him come in.

Owen gives his mother a quizzical look, and she looks nervously from Whitney to Owen.

"Owen," Whitney says before his mom can say anything. She's clutching her mug of tea like a lifeline. "I wanted to talk to you." There's a pause, and then she adds, "about my little sister." As if there's something else they might talk about. Too much has happened since that afternoon where they discussed her taste in music.

He can't imagine what she has to say to him. Does she blame him? If Annabel mentioned their argument and then that night killed herself... of course, half the time he blames himself, too.

For a moment he tries to imagine himself in her place, tries to imagine Mallory doing to herself what Annabel did. All that achieves is getting him pissed off for no good reason, so he puts the image out of his mind and turns to Whitney.

"Let's go up to my room," he says. She nods, and as he leads her off he sees his mom giving Whitney a concerned look.

They go up to his room, and they are quiet for a moment before she turns to him and says, boldly, "I love... loved my sister, but we weren't ever very close."

And he knows that she's going to ask him why. He doesn't know what he's going to tell her, but he waits for her to finish.

"We didn't tell each other much, but she always seemed happy." She waits to see if he'll say anything, but he doesn't.

"Well," she says, "maybe not happy. Maybe more like... fine."

"No one who says they're fine is even a little bit okay," he says, thinking of the last time she told him she was fine. Look how that turned out.

"I guess," Whitney says. "It's just... I mean, wouldn't I have known that there was something wrong?" Owen shrugs, and she looks at him. "Did you know about something? Was there any reason you can think of?"

The truth is that he doesn't know, and he could tell her that and not be lying—but it wouldn't be the whole truth. He's been down the half-truth road too many times to fool himself into thinking it would be a good idea.

"We had an argument that day," he says, and Whitney listens with wide eyes. "We went out, but she seemed distracted and upset, and she ditched me. The next day—_the _day—I asked her why and she wouldn't tell me, and I... was angry."

Whitney can see where this is going and intervenes. "Owen, what she did is not your fault," she says. "She didn't do this because she thought you were mad at her, that's just not like her. It sounds like something happened before your date."

He nods silently. "She was usually so open and... honest," he mutters, and Whitney looks at him like he's crazy. He's watching her, trying to figure out what the look means, when she speaks.

"You knew a very different Annabel than I did," she whispers. "We never talked about anything real, you know. Nothing important, not even when I..."

He thinks she might mention her eating disorder, which Annabel had told him about awhile ago, but she doesn't.

"Well," Whitney says, composing herself. "I'll just go, if you don't know anything. I should get home." Owen nods.

"Of course. I'll walk you out."

On the porch as she starts toward Annabel's car - her car now, he supposes - he stops her.

"Whitney," he says. She turns around and looks at him. "I'll let you know if I think of anything. Or if I found anything out."

For the first time since they started talking, her eyes fill with tears.

"Thank you," she says. "That really means a lot." She stops and he thinks she might go, but she starts talking again. "This is just so sudden. None of us knew she was even upset." She gives a dark, humorless laugh. "Did you know Dad wanted a murder investigation?" Owen hadn't heard that. "Apparently the police had some kind of conclusive proof that she did it to herself, though. I'm not really sure how that stuff works..." She looks up at Owen, and for a moment she looks old beyond her years. "We just want some answers," she says quietly.

"I understand," he says, and he does. He wants answers too.


	4. Answers

_**A/N: **Here's another chapter for you guys. Sorry they come so irregularly, I'll try to be better. I'm pretty sure this is the longest chapter so far, and it's also my favorite so far. This was basically the scene I had in mind when I originally got the idea for this story, so I hope you enjoy. Also, I really appreciate people favoriting/following this story, and it definitely is nice to know that I do actually have people reading this. It would be really nice if you could just leave a quick review to let me know what you think of it, if you like it, anything you'd like to see happen, etc. I hate to be that person who begs for reviews, but it takes like two seconds and I really value your opinions. Anyway, on with the story!_

* * *

**4\. Answers**

Emily's watching at lunch as her friends chat, always making sure, every so often, to bring her into the conversation. She pokes her sandwich more than really eats it, though she laughs at the right moments. She nods, and, when asked a direct question, she answers it with a smile.

But she is far from okay. It's not just the rape, though that is certainly, of course, a lot of it. It's that she can't help but remember how Annabel didn't have friends making sure to bring her into the conversation after it happened to her. She especially can't get out of her mind the many times she stood by and laughed while Sophie called her a slut or a whore—the couple of times she said it to herself, too.

Most of all, she can't help but wonder if, even though Will Cash has been arrested and is facing trial, he will get away with what he did to Annabel.

She's sitting out in the courtyard at school, poking her sandwich and listening to her friends talk when she sees someone walking along the wall, directly into her line of sight.

She knows who he is, of course. Everyone does—he's Owen Armstrong, that guy who got in that fistfight and had to go to juvie. Or something. He looks angry now, too. He walks along the wall, scowling, earbuds in his hands instead of his ears. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he turns and kicks the wall hard enough, were it a person rather than a wall, to break bones. He lets out this sort of grunt, and Emily is perplexed, now completely ignoring her friends' conversation, as she watches him turn in her direction so she can see his face. He is crying.

Suddenly, she remembers that he's not just that guy who got in a fight. She remembers seeing him and Annabel hanging out together, thinking what an odd pair they were.

She knows who to tell.

It's an especially bad day. He's been back at school for four days now, everyday scanning the hallways, trying to think who he might ask about why Annabel would've killed herself. The problem is he was the only person he knew of who she hung out with, and he couldn't think of who she used to be friends with—who probably wouldn't know anyway.

He was walking out to the courtyard for lunch when Thank You by Led Zeppelin came on his iPod, which was just on shuffle. He froze, listening to the first few bars.

He suddenly realized he was crying and yanked the earbuds from his ears, not even bothering to pause it. He kept walking, trying not to remember, trying not to remember...

_He was sitting in Annabel's car, looking at a mix CD her sister had made for her, scanning the track list._

"_She has good taste," he'd said. "I mean, there's Led Zeppelin here, but at least it's not Stairway to Heaven. In fact, Thank You is my favorite Led Zeppelin song."_

"_Really?" she'd said, turning to look at him and smiling as she always seemed to whenever he started to talk about music._

"_Really," he said, smiling, as he always did, at her interest in his music. "It's got that kind of cheesy, power-ballad feel. Kind of ironic, yet truthful. Can I put it on?" And she'd agreed and he had, and they'd listened as she drove him home._

He turns and kicks the wall they used to eat lunch together on as hard as he can, letting out a grunt at the pain of his toe making contact, even through his shoe, with the stone.

He cannot fucking believe that she's gone.

He's just thinking that he needs to go spend lunch in his car, trying to collect himself, or maybe just skip rest of the day, he hasn't decided, when a girl walks smack into him.

"I'm so sorry," she says, backing away. She's probably a freshman or sophomore by the looks of her, but he honestly doesn't care right now. He starts to walk past her.

"Owen, wait," she says suddenly, and he turns around. "I need to talk to you." He glowers at her, definitely not in the mood for whatever she has to say. She looks nervous at the look on his face.

"It's... it's about Annabel," she says quietly, and the glower melts away. He can tell she knows something.

"Let's go talk in my car," he chokes out.

They sit in his car, leaving it off but rolling the windows down. He turns to her.

"What's your name?" The girl tucks her hair behind her ear.

"I'm Emily," she says. "I don't know if you know, but Annabel and I were kind of friends last year. We modeled together, and we sometimes hung out at school."

"But you're not anymore?" he asks. She shakes her head.

"Something happened. It's kind of what I wanted to talk about."

Something. Placeholder. He doesn't say it though, because this is what he's been waiting for. Something happened, that's why she did what she did. Or at least part of why. He needs to know, and so does her sister.

"What happened?" he asks. She sighs.

"Well, I don't know how much you keep up with school gossip—"

"I don't," he says.

She makes a face like she has a bad taste in her mouth, then her mouth straightens out into a determined line.

"There was a party a little while ago, the Friday before Annabel... died." He looks up at that and their eyes meet, but neither says anything. "Sophie—you know who she is, right?"

"Pretty, mean, lots of friends?" Emily nods.

"That would be her. She and I were, I guess you'd say best friends. But her boyfriend made me a little uncomfortable. Anyway, he gave me a ride to the party but she wasn't there and he..." She's hoping to god she won't have to say it. It still gives her panic attacks at night, still gives her chills to talk about. But he doesn't know. "He... attacked me." She meets Owen's eyes. "He _forced_ me."

Owen lets out a breath. Of anything he might have been expecting, it definitely was not that. He doesn't even know what to say to that. "I'm so sorry that happened to you," he says quietly. He's not sure what it has to do with Annabel, but he can hardly interrupt Emily now.

"Thank you," she says. She collects herself and continues. "Anyway, Sophie caught us and he told her I'd come on to him. She called me some terrible names, said I was a traitor, said I could never possibly have been her friend." Owen's fist clenches just imagining the scene. "Anyway, I went home, told my mom, we called the cops. He was arrested. It's okay. End of story."

Owen looks back up at her. "I'm sorry that happened to you," he says again, "but what does...?" She sighs.

"You don't understand. You didn't hear about all that drama about Annabel at the beginning of the year?"

He's about to shake his head when he remembers something.

"_Me and Sophie? It was just... we had a falling out over the summer." At his raised eyebrow, she elaborated. "She thinks I slept with her boyfriend."_

"_Did you?"_

"_No," she said softly, "I didn't."_

"No," he murmurs.

"You know?" He hits his steering wheel with his open hand. He knows. Oh, he knows. But he asks anyway.

"What happened?" She can tell he's figured it out, but she'll tell him anyway.

"There was this party at the end of the school year," she begins. He's holding his breath, his throat tight, his fingernails digging into his palms. "And Sophie's boyfriend—the same boyfriend—was there. And Annabel went to go get us drinks and she was taking a while, and then Sophie walked in on her and Will _together._" Owen is breathing hard now. "And Will told her that Annabel had come on to him. And Sophie said horrible things to her, and Annabel was shaking and she said she hadn't come on to him but no one would listen to her. So she left. We didn't see her again all summer."

He can't imagine her having held this all in for nearly a year. He remembers the first day he met her, when she'd shoved Sophie. What had Sophie said? Something about how one time wasn't enough for her and she had to come back for more? He remembers now something from right before that, something that hadn't even registered as being important—Annabel looking uncomfortable as she talked to a guy in a car through his rolled down window. And then, minutes after that when Owen had officially met her for the first time, she'd been kneeling in the grass vomiting.

She hadn't been uncomfortable. She'd been terrified. Had he been threatening her? Had he grabbed her arm so she couldn't leave? Owen can't remember the details.

Suddenly Emily is crying, sobbing hysterically. Owen can barely make out her words between sobs.

"And we were—all so—mean—to her! I—called—her—a whore—for—being—r—r—" Emily sniffs and takes a deep breath, and suddenly, just like that, she has calmed herself. "Raped," she finishes quietly. "She was raped and we all told her what a slut she was."

Owen's fist clenched and unclenched, wanting very badly to punch someone but knowing that this was neither the time to do so nor the person to do so to. Tears in his eyes, heart racing, he took deep breaths. Counted to ten. Turned his gaze back on Emily, who was watching with big eyes and whose cheeks were wet.

Calmly, coolly—with only his death grip on the steering wheel to betray his fury—Owen ran his fingers through his hair, turning back to look at her. He could remember how often Annabel had been sitting in that same spot. When she'd laughed at his using a hammer to buckle her in, when she'd first asked about his music and he'd explained what it meant to be enlightened. He blinked and reminded himself that all of that was gone now.

He took a breath and collected himself. He forced himself to see Emily again and not Annabel.

"Can you go somewhere with me after school?"


End file.
